I recently took lots of digital still shots on my Sharp internet viewcam. When I tried to transfer the files to my PC via a supplied parallel port smartcard reader, all these garbled filenames and strange dates (e.g. 20/10/2007) appeared in the folder where the still pics were stored. Is the smartcard corrupt? Is there anything I can do to retrieve the lost pictures?

-- Help less (cybercatz@garbage.com), October 21, 1999

Answers

The "strange" date is in European format, I think (?), with the day and month switched. You should be able to change the date format if it bothers you.

What do you mean by garbled filenames? Are the files readable? My camers creates files with sequential names (PA190054, PA190055, PA190056...). I still don't know what the "PA" is for, but the "19" is the day of the month. The "0054, 0055, 0056" are file sequencial numbers.

-- Dale R Dankulich (dalerd01@earthlink.net), October 21, 1999.

The filenames are not in roman characters but #%$!#! sort of names and the smartcard reader cannot recognise the filetype.

-- help less (cybercatz@garbage.com), October 22, 1999.